Dreaming of rats in Chinese dream interpretation: meaning

Within this tradition

The twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac begin with the rat. A well-known folk tale tells how the animals held a race to settle their order. The rat let the ox carry it across the river and jumped off the ox's back just before the finish, and so it came first. The story is told with a smile. The rat is small, but sharp and practical, and those are the qualities traditionally ascribed to people born in a Year of the Rat.

The rat also belongs to the first of the twelve earthly branches, zi, which marks the double hour around midnight. It stands at the turning point where one day ends and the next begins. That is why some interpreters see in a rat dream the start of a new cycle: something small and quiet that clears the way for what follows.

There is a down-to-earth side as well. In a farming society rats come where the grain is, and a full storehouse draws them in. The historian Sima Qian tells of the young Li Si, who noticed that the rats in a latrine were thin and skittish while the rats in the granary lived fat and untroubled. He concluded that a person's fortunes depend on where they stand. A dream of rats among stored food can therefore go two ways: plenty that attracts attention, or a nudge to guard what you have built up.

Popular dream books in the Zhou Gong line, which differ from one edition to the next, give the rat both faces. In some readings it points to petty people, xiaoren, who take what is not theirs or talk behind your back. In others it points to income and stores. The scene decides: did the rat take something from you, or did you see it in a full and peaceful place?

Folk custom has a gentler picture too. In many regions people tell of the rats' wedding, a night in the first lunar month when the rats get married, and New Year prints show a procession of rats bearing a bridal sedan chair. A cheerful or orderly rat dream can be read in that festive spirit.

Common variations